Over the past couple of days, a series of friends have asked me how I'm doing, but not in the cliché way we tend to ask one another how they are, tuning out for the actual answer. My friends lately have been asking me intently, with deep attention to my response in order to sincerely hear me when they ask, "How's your heart?"
I was just having this conversation Sunday with my beautiful friend Maris over coffee in the parking lot of one of our new favorite brunch spots. The next day after a praise and prayer session at LSU's newest frat house turned glory home, The JP2 house, where 11 of my dude friends live in community, brotherhood and purity, striving for something more, I had a similar conversation with my good friend Emile. Even today, Philip, a friend I went on mission to Honduras with, asked how my soul was doing.
The friends I choose to surround myself with genuinely care and desire to know how I am doing; not just physically or mentally, but almost exclusively spiritually. Often close friends of mine and I talk about our prayer, what the Lord is doing in our hearts and how He is moving amongst us.
Lately I've noticed that my response to these questions shows my growth as a daughter of the King.
Let's be real, we don't always know we've grown until we look back and see things that used to torment us now reign ineffective over our hearts. I struggle daily, like all of my brothers and sisters, with viewing myself as a precious, beloved and sincere gift of the Father. This view of myself sometimes causes me to be immune to the Father's Word. But the Father always desires to show us we are worthy of His Love and He uses His Word to show our eyes when our ears have gone deaf to Truth.
Day to day these 7 thoughts, 7 potentially very deadly thoughts, enter my mind:
1. I'm a perfectionist at times.
2. I like to be right.
3. I desire to be put together.
4. I hate relinquishing control.
5. I can be very stubborn.
6. I'm scared of disappointing others or being inadequate.
7. Sometimes I only trust myself and even then, I still let myself down.
But the Lord desires to flip all of these judgments about ourselves.
1. So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:48
2. For the word of the LORD is upright, And all His work is done in faithfulness. Psalm 33:4
3. For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. Psalm
139:13
4. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that
bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5
5. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will
not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13
6. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8
7. Sovereign LORD, you are God! Your covenant is trustworthy, and you have promised
these good things to your servant. 2 Samuel 7:28
Why do we so often forget that we have been begotten by Divine Love Himself?
Why is it so easy for us to dismiss the sheer magnitude of the Lord's power?
Somewhere along the line we have each bought into the lie that we are not enough, not worthy, inadequate or unusable. The deceiver specially curates a plan to aid each one of us in our fall from the throne, our rightful place of residence in the Kingdom. The enemy who is constantly creating plans, as unoriginal as they might be, to ignite our destruction is honestly defeating.
But what trumps all of the father of lies scare tactics?
That the Lord our God specially curates a plan for our own individual outpouring of grace to aid in our resurrection from the things that have plagued us.
Whether it's a common vice, a habitual sin or a problem we think we are the only human in the world suffering under the weight: The Lord sees us, redeems us, and resurrects us with the redemptive power of His victory on the cross.
The cross has the final word.
That word, is victory.
St. Michael the Archangel, pray for us!
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